Measure Twice Cut Once

I’m guessing most people are familar with the old adage of “Measure once cut twice”?

I was reminded of it whilst doing some DIY last night, well actually after botching some DIY I’m now the proud owner of ill fitting coat hooks and an unwanted hole !

If only I’d remembered those wise words, it’s easy, quick and cheap to measure twice. Any initial errors can be corrected before the commitment to the part of the job that’s expensive, where mistakes can be complicated and costly to correct (or just embarrassing).

It applies as much to launching a product as it does to manual work! I appreciate that this sounds increasingly like a Sunday morning sermon, but I think the points worth it. How often do you “measure” products before you launch them?

Do you do no consumer/shopper research, some at the start and /or at the end of the process, or do you rigorously test throughout the process, covering every aspect of a product to ensure it’s optimised and appropriate?

Google famously tested 41 shades of blue for their logo, and whilst that is an extreme example if you aren’t testing that your product , naming, claims, packaging and promotional messaging are optimal, why not?

Testing is (thanks to technologies like vypr) cheap, fast and easy to do ahead of launch. Mistakes that make it into the final product are expensive, time consuming and potentially impossible to correct. Second chances for on shelf success aren’t that common in todays retail environment, but we all know....cutting is more fun than measuring!